Interesting points! I hadn’t seriously considered the possibility of animals having more moral weight per capita than humans, but I guess it makes some sense, even if it’s implausible. Two points:
1. Are the ranges conditional on each species being moral patients at all? If not, it seems like there’d be enough probability mass on 0 for some of the less complex animals that any reasonable confidence interval should include it.
2. What are your thoughts on pleasure/pain asymmetries? Would your ranges for the moral weight of positive experiences alone be substantially different to the ones above? To me, it makes intuitive sense that animals can feel pain in roughly the same way we do, but the greatest happiness I experience is so wrapped up in my understanding of the overall situation and my expectations for the future that I’m much less confident that they can come anywhere close.
Yes, I meant to be describing ranges conditional on each species being moral patients at all. I previously gave my own (very made-up) probabilities for that here. Another worry to consider, though, is that many biological/cognitive and behavioral features of a species are simultaneously (1) evidence about their likelihood of moral patienthood (via consciousness), and (2) evidence about features that might affect their moral weight *given* consciousness/patienthood. So, depending on how you use that evidence, it’s important to watch out for double-counting.
Interesting points! I hadn’t seriously considered the possibility of animals having more moral weight per capita than humans, but I guess it makes some sense, even if it’s implausible. Two points:
1. Are the ranges conditional on each species being moral patients at all? If not, it seems like there’d be enough probability mass on 0 for some of the less complex animals that any reasonable confidence interval should include it.
2. What are your thoughts on pleasure/pain asymmetries? Would your ranges for the moral weight of positive experiences alone be substantially different to the ones above? To me, it makes intuitive sense that animals can feel pain in roughly the same way we do, but the greatest happiness I experience is so wrapped up in my understanding of the overall situation and my expectations for the future that I’m much less confident that they can come anywhere close.
Yes, I meant to be describing ranges conditional on each species being moral patients at all. I previously gave my own (very made-up) probabilities for that here. Another worry to consider, though, is that many biological/cognitive and behavioral features of a species are simultaneously (1) evidence about their likelihood of moral patienthood (via consciousness), and (2) evidence about features that might affect their moral weight *given* consciousness/patienthood. So, depending on how you use that evidence, it’s important to watch out for double-counting.
I’ll skip responding to #2 for now.